A Moon Shaped BoolUnity Technologies

That's a bit power-usery indeed. Seems to me that the cubes could be shifted to the right and entirely replace the > arrow for editing a prefab. So people would just click the cube there instead... It'll be too late by the time prefabs ship to change the mess of (icon) (text) (icon) (icon) (icon)

Really it could be:

text icon icon icon

Because text has a rollout and depth to it in the hierarchy, so it makes sense to bang all the icons right-justified especially if Unity wants further expansion and currently even now it's icon text icon ( > ) and that's just a jumble mentally.

The prefab icon could replace > and perform the same clickable functionality. It would not necessarily even have to be on the far right even, and allow futher Unity icon expansion.

I know I've been active in prefabs feedback but I'm only ever active in areas I have a keen vested interest in improving or using. Don't get me wrong

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How would 'text icon icon icon' work for varying text lengths? If the Icons auto-adapted to the longest gameobject name in the heirarchy, surely that would cause inconsistency and strangely wide spacing causing lots of horizontal scanning across the width of the heirarhcy to work out if something is a gameobject, prefab, model asset, variant, nested prefab etc?

With the icons all on the left of the text (in a column), as it is now, it keeps consistency and familiarity.

Digital ApeModerator

We find there is enough real estate there - and indeed assets on asset store that modify hierarchy - including our own - do not have the problem. Because icons take up significantly less room than text. To run into the problem you need to make the hierarchy as thin as possible and even then you need to have a huge amount of text - much longer than the accepted amount of space for a UX input.

But yes, it's possible to run out of space now. Adding one cube doesn't change that. The inspector itself demonstrates what occurs when space runs out, the text is cropped.

(Assuming that it's not a deep hierarchy).

In your case the text would be cropped much more and people would just see pretty icons instead. I'm not sure that's an improvement. "Wow! what do these icons do? WTF is this object anyway, I can't see the name of it! let me click..."

But, I don't see any justifiable logic having the icons on the left (or right, but I'll get to that), because the text is more important than the icon.

There real issue here is that you are deciding to invade space designed for text, with lots of icons. Prefabs shouldn't even be invading that space at all. But you are going there so you will create more problems to solve when there are actually alternative ways to express what is a prefab and so on without bullying the written word.

I think if I had to choose what to look at, it would be text. Currently blue text indicates a prefab. You can support endless icons I guess if you hold a modifier key and mouse over. Or you could have a row of icons at the bottom of the hierarchy that change to indicate the status of the current line you mouse over. There's a lot more to explore UX wise than just putting prefab icons all over it for no real reason. I mean... most of the time you do not want to know if it's a prefab or not. But that is information you choose to prioritise. Must ask why?

Now the real problem is why are you prioritising so much space in the hierarchy (which is really designed for tree view text) for things you only need to know about sometimes? Wouldn't it be sufficient to mouse-over? or show info with a modifier? If the user is really interested in changing things then they can click it and inspector has so much more room to breathe for all of this.

I'm not against change. But change does not necessarily mean improved when it's not actually thinking clearly about how often people will want to change a prefab. Do we need to know, all of the time and change things all of the time in relation to others?

In the games I've worked on in Unity in the last decade I have to say "no, I don't need to know what things are unless I'm in tinker mode, which is not anywhere near as often as being in organisational mode"

So perhaps another thought is... have hierarchy modes. Prefab mode. Organiser mode. Heck even have thumbnail mode with slider if you want so you can zoom in and see little images of what is organised, the world is your oyster beyond just locking yourself into cubes forever (tm) that nobody really needs to know about most of the time.

Prioritise what the user needs, when the user needs it.

TLDR:
Feel prefab workflow and icons are invasive and people working on real games do not need to tinker anywhere near as much as the new design is designed for. The new design assumes you would be tinkering more than organising. That's really not true for real games. For real games the problem is much much more about organising where things are.

Is this static? is this streamed? should this dynamic object be nested inside this static level part? that's local to this object though! Stuff like that are real problems people are battling 90% of the time in the hierarchy and have nothing at all to do with prefabs.

Feels like the new prefab hierarchy view is going to be pushing people to solve problems by throwing more prefabs/variations/nesting at it but like OOP you'll find that it doesn't work. You'll hit a diamond pattern problem.

A Moon Shaped BoolUnity Technologies

We find there is enough real estate there - and indeed assets on asset store that modify hierarchy - including our own - do not have the problem. Because icons take up significantly less room than text. To run into the problem you need to make the hierarchy as thin as possible and even then you need to have a huge amount of text - much longer than the accepted amount of space for a UX input.

But yes, it's possible to run out of space now. Adding one cube doesn't change that. The inspector itself demonstrates what occurs when space runs out, the text is cropped.

In your case the text would be cropped much more and people would just see pretty icons instead. I'm not sure that's an improvement. "Wow! what do these icons do? WTF is this object anyway, I can't see the name of it! let me click..."

But, I don't see any justifiable logic having the icons on the left, because the text is more important than the icon.

There real issue here is that you are deciding to invade space designed for text, with lots of icons. Prefabs shouldn't even be invading that space at all. But you are going there so you will create more problems to solve when there are actually alternative ways to express what is a prefab and so on without bullying the written word.

Click to expand...

I was talking more about the heirarchy being wide and text being short. There could be inches of blank space between the text and the icons if the icons are in a column to the right. The purpose of an icon is to have instant readability and familiarity of what the icon is and what it indicates to the text/button/whatever it is 'accompanying' (or not accompanying in some instances where text isn't required, such as the Facebook Icon). If you have to scan horizontally and play guesswork on which icon on the right is connected to which text on the left then the heirarchy is not usefully readable and is counterproductive to organisation and working out which icon relates to which piece of text.

Im not entirely sure how we are 'invading' space by placing icons to the left of text. We are hardly the first piece of software to do it and definitely won't be the last. Maya, Max, Flash, Houdini, Unreal Engine, After Effects, iMovie, SourceTree and many more place icons on the left of text in their lists and hierarchies.

Only issue for me is the same box icon running thing length of a hierarchy window. It can definitely look silly at first. But honestly i think it just looks weird because we’re not used to it yet.

Though maybe a nice solution to break things up would be to allow the top most component change the icon if there is a special icon associated with it. Along with straightforward Editor or Gizmo api to apply a custom icons for your script

One thing abour the icons though: I use 3DSmax all day and i never even think about the hierarchy icons. Only when i need to find something (bones, iks, a camera) is when glance at the icons. They’re helpful without being flamboyant about their presence/importance.

In Unity atm, the icons are kinda in your face. The initial designs were much worse in this regard, so these are a marked improvement but i still think they’re kinda bold, imo

A Moon Shaped BoolUnity Technologies

Only issue for me is the same box icon running thing length of a hierarchy window. It can definitely look silly at first. But honestly i think it just looks weird because we’re not used to it yet.

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Its the same with any new evolution/phase of something relatively established. AFAIK, the Hierarchy Window hasn't changed since Unity Version 1 which was released 13 years ago! Of course its going to look different when it changes. Its why people always complain when a software they use daily like Twitter or Facebook changes it's interface, but a few months after the change, when looking back at previous versions, they always look and feel strange.

Admittedly, when I started using internal Preview Prefab Builds sometime last year, it was strange to me too! But now the icons are expected and very useful. It is actually confusing to me to go back to pre-2018.3 versions and not have heirarchy icons indicating what is or isn't a prefab or if an object is a prefab or model gameobject.

Its the same with any new evolution/phase of something relatively established. AFAIK, the Hierarchy Window hasn't changed since Unity Version 1 which was released 13 years ago! Of course its going to look different when it changes. Its why people always complain when a software they use daily like Twitter or Facebook changes it's interface, but a few months after the change, when looking back at previous versions, they always look and feel strange.

Admittedly, when I started using internal Preview Prefab Builds sometime last year, it was strange to me too! But now the icons are expected and very useful. It is actually confusing to me to go back to pre-2018.3 versions and not have heirarchy icons indicating what is or isn't a prefab or if an object is a prefab or model gameobject.

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This is acclimatisation as rationalisation, and irrelevant.

It only matters how it's first perceived, how it's taught and what it benefits. In that order, but with significance on the tail.

I don't really understand how that relates to the current topic of conversation.

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I got confused too. I think it means that the current design change isn't being seem as something that is better enough to be a paradigm shift (a car) than the previous one (the horse), but merely an improvement to it (a faster horse, not a car). It seems to be referring to that alleged Ford quote "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

. If you have to scan horizontally and play guesswork on which icon on the right is connected to which text on the left

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That's an issue that has been solved in most GUIs by having alternating colors per row (like how Unity's light explorer is).

And my 2 cents on the whole topic now that I've had a bit of time: I still don't like the icons. Nor on the left, nor on the right, nor anywhere. We have like 50 prefabs in the whole project. Out of those 50, 10 or so are ones that are actually used as prefabs and that we update occasionally.

So what do I have to gain by the hierarchy telling me that almost none of the gameobjects in my scene are prefabs?

Maybe we are the exception. But for my uses, the icons are as useful as if you added icons everywhere to indicate that there's no AudioSource attached.

Digital ApeModerator

Maya, Max, Flash, Houdini, Unreal Engine, After Effects, iMovie, SourceTree and many more place icons on the left of text in their lists and hierarchies.

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Do they all allow multiple components of any kind stacked upon each other with no real limit per object? The answer is "No, they don't."

So if you want to justify decision making based on something that solves a completely different problem just because it looks similar on the surface, be my guest

That is following badly instead of looking at Unity's own actual problems that need solving, in my view. I can manage the new look fine, it doesn't affect me. But I do not consider it anywhere near the level it could've been. Too late now.

Im not entirely sure how we are 'invading' space by placing icons to the left of text. We are hardly the first piece of software to do it and definitely won't be the last. Maya, Max, Flash, Houdini, Unreal Engine, After Effects, iMovie, SourceTree and many more place icons on the left of text in their lists and hierarchies.

Click to expand...

I think they're talking about how icons are making the horizontal expansion of hierarchy 2x wider, so when you're 3 levels deep you have 2x more offset to the right, which is a problem on tight editor layouts.

Unity Technologies

I think they're talking about how icons are making the horizontal expansion of hierarchy 2x wider, so when you're 3 levels deep you have 2x more offset to the right, which is a problem on tight editor layouts.

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No, the offset per indent level was 14 pixels in 2018.2 and is still 14 pixels in 2018.3. No change in the offset per indent level, so you don't get 2x more offset for deep hierarchies, only a fixed offset which is the width of an icon.

No, it don't. There is zero reasons to draw gray cube near each object. I know that it is not a prefab.
Also I never use a nested prefabs (and many developers too), so blue cubes near prefabs is not necessary at all.
Prefabs have blue names, it is more that an enough.

Some of you have requested options to turn this or that on or off, such as turning all the icons entirely off. Providing options for something is a feature like any other feature. It's not free for us to add; once something can be turned on or off, both ways have to be designed, implemented, tested and made sure to work with every other feature that might interact with it. Apart from that, all options increase the complexity of the product a tiny bit.

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We are talking about single checkbox and single

Code (CSharp):

if(bool==true)

condition

This option is totally harmless and will not cause any issues. It also will not increase "complexity of product".
Writing of this text on the forum probably took more time than implementation of this option.

Just look at theQHierarchy
It have a huge window with options where you can tweak anything according to your taste and no matter how you will setup it, it always works well without any issues.'

Just make an option, it will took you 5 minutes for implementation and another 15 minutes for testing.
And everyone will be happy.

I'm not seeing an off button still on release of 2018.3 which is unfortunate, because i'm not currently actually using very many prefabs, and am utilizing different Techniques to share data across many things.

It's not really the horizontal space that is bothersome, but just seeing extra "white noise" when i'm already tired, and looking through the hierarchy for specifics is something I would like to be able to turn off.

Chiming in very briefly just to add one thing: regardless of which icons get chosen, I believe that creating a user preference to decide what icons to visualise in the Hierarchy is not a good idea.

It sounds good in principle ("I get to choose how to visualise things!"), in practice it creates confusion when you post screenshots, you're following a tutorial online, reading docs, and you're not seeing what you have in your editor. Or maybe when we create a new icon to communicate a new type of object (like Prefab Variants), and people have icons off.

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I think the way users can customise the app they use everyday is more important than screenshots in the manual, this must be one of the least comelling reasons to take power away from the user.

Unity Technologies

For everyone who believes that adding a preference to turn off the icons is high priority compared to all the other Prefab improvements we could be working on, please add it as an idea in our feedback site and vote for that.

When writing the feedback site idea, please make it clear if you just want to remove the icons and nothing else (so it's essentially impossible to see what is a Prefab versus Nested Prefab, Prefab versus Prefab Variant and Model Prefab, Nested Prefab versus Added Prefab), e.g. if you don't need this info at all maybe because you don't use Prefabs - or if you want all this info to be visible by some other means instead, and if so, what your suggestion is for that. We've heard tons of different ideas for these things in this thread that go in all kinds of different directions, with little agreement or consensus so we'd need the different ideas specified and see the votes for each of them to be able to see if there's anything a significant number of people can actually agree on.

Feel free to post links to your ideas on the feedback site in this forum so others can vote on them. Like all feature requests, we will take it into account and consideration along with all the other feature requests we get.

Unity Technologies

We don't have any votes left. None of us do. Your feedback site isn't a very good way of giving feedback, because we've already given feedback 10 times and are now locked out permanently.

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You can remove your votes on things you've voted for so you can spend those votes for something else instead. The system requires you to prioritize by design, so that it reflects what you think is most important, not just everything you'd like.

To remove existing votes, use the link in the right side "Where are my votes?", click on some idea you've voted on that you think is lower priority than the new thing you want to vote on, and click on the cross (tooltip "Remove") to remove your vote. You will then get it back so you can spend it on something else.

Unity Technologies

In my opinion Its not the most efficient tool for design feedback, because things that have the most votes are not neccesary related to design. Forum post and bug reports are the best ways I have seen working to get ideas implemented.

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This thread already has plenty of ideas posted, but
1) It's our impression from overall feedback (also outside of this thread, and outside of forums) that there are other Prefab improvements that are important to a lot more people than this.
2) The ideas in this thread go in many different directions, many of them mutually exclusive.

Like I said, we'd need the different ideas specified and see the votes for each of them to be able to see if there's anything a significant number of people can actually agree on. Endlessly continuing this forum thread is not going to help with that.

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